Does Every Vote Count? Democrat Beats Republican by Single Vote in Kentucky House Race

Many Americans may wonder if their vote matters.

And they received evidence affirming the idea last week, when a single vote was the deciding factor in a Kentucky state House race. Republican incumbent Representative D.J. Johnson garnered 6,318 votes, while his Democratic challenger Jim Glenn got 6,319.

“I won by one vote,” Glenn told The Washington Post on Friday. “But a win’s a win — whether it’s by one vote or 1,000.”

Glenn also told TristateHomepage.com that he was “happy that the public got a chance to see that every vote counts, which is what we saw in the basic election.”

Daviess County’s board of elections upheld a review of the votes from machines and the state’s board of elections next week will convene to approve the outcome, The Associated Press reported.

Johnson, who won the state House District 13 seat in 2017 from Glenn who held it since 2006, told the AP he did not ask family and friends if they voted for him or blame them.

“If someone came up and said that to me, I certainly wouldn’t hold them guilty,” Johnson said. “I have fought that urge to second-guess. I know I ran the best campaign I could.”

But the one vote has not prompted Johnson to give up yet.

“It went as expected. I didn’t expect any changes. At this point, we’re still in the process, step one,” he told TristateHomepage.com. “I’m meeting with the team, talking with them to consider a recount.”

It does not take even a majority to win a state. One hundred six of Trump's electoral votes from seven states (Utah, Michigan, Wisconsin, Florida, North Carolina, Arizona, and Pennsylvania) were awarded without getting 50% of those states' popular vote. Hillary Clinton was awarded 49 electoral votes without getting a majority.

There was never an actual need for the Electoral College; it was a means by which the less populous slave states still had a disproportionate say in choosing the President. It's not an accident that twelve of the first fifteen Presidential elections were won by men from southern states.

It should be noted that the U.S. Senate, one of the single most undemocratic elected bodies, was also a result of slave-state demands for more power in the government. California, with 12% of the U.S. population, has only a 2% voice in the Senate. It has more population than Iowa, Mississippi, Arkansas, Kansas, Utah, Nevada, New Mexico, West Virginia, Nebraska, Idaho, Hawaii, Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Montana, Delaware, South Dakota, Alaska, North Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming combined, yet gets two votes in the Senate to the aforementioned other states' 42.

So, the southern slave states are responsible for having the U.S. Senate, the Electoral College, AND the Second Amendment (originally intended to help southern states quell slave rebellions).

The reason we don't have direct popular elections for President is that too many powerful interests would find themselves with much less power, were they to allow such a democratic reform.